STOCKHOLM: Press freedom across the globe have plummeted to their lowest point in half a century, as indicated by a recent report from a democracy think tank, coinciding with the United States plans to significantly shorten the stay of foreign journalists in the country.
Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and Myanmar — already among the poorest performers in press freedoms — posted the biggest falls, the report by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said.
The fourth-biggest drop was in South Korea, it added, citing “a spike in defamation cases initiated by the government and its political allies against journalists, and raids on journalists’ residences”.
“The current state of democracy in the world is concerning,” IDEA secretary general Kevin Casas-Zamora, secretary general told AFP.
Over 100 media groups urge US not to reduce duration of foreign journalists’ stay
More than half of countries in the world (54 percent), registered a drop in one of the five key democracy indicators between 2019 and 2024, the report said.
“The most important finding in our report is the very acute deterioration in press freedom around the world,” Casas-Zamora said.
Between 2019 and 2024, it saw “the biggest drop over the past 50 years”.
“We’ve never seen such an acute deterioration in a key indicator of democratic health,” he said.
Press freedoms declined in 43 countries across all continents, including 15 in Africa and 15 in Europe.
“There’s a toxic brew that is coming together, which involves, on the one hand, heavy-handed interventions on the part of governments,” some of them “legacies of what happened during the pandemic”.
On the other hand, “you have the very negative impact of disinformation, some of which is real disinformation and some of which is used as a pretext by governments to clamp down on press freedoms”.
The think tank is concerned about the consolidation of traditional media worldwide, as well as the “disappearance in many countries of local media which plays a very important role in supporting a democratic debate”, Casas-Zamora said.
The report only covers the period 2019 to 2024 and does not include the first effects of US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.
But “some of the things that we saw during the election at the end of last year and in the first few months of 2025 are fairly disturbing”, Casas-Zamora said.
“Since what happens in the US has this ability to go global, this does not bode well for democracy globally,” he added.
Slashing journalist visas
Meanwhile, more than 100 international media groups and industry bodies urged Washington not to slash the time foreign journalists can stay in the United States, saying the planned change would hurt its image abroad.
President Donald Trump’s plan would “reduce the quantity and quality of coverage coming from the US” and “damage, not enhance, America’s global standing”, AFP news agency and 117 other signatories to a joint statement wrote.
Backers of the appeal ranged from international news agencies like AFP and Reuters, to public broadcasters including Britain’s BBC, Germany’s ARD and Australia’s ABC, national newspapers like Canada’s Globe and Mail or the Irish Times and press freedom groups including Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Trump administration last month trailed plans to slash journalists’ stays to a renewable 240-day period — or just 90 days for Chinese media workers — alongside a four-year limit on student visas.
Current rules allow journalists to stay in the US for up to five years, meaning they “gain the deep knowledge, trusted networks and contextual immersion needed to explain America to global audiences”, the signatories said.
“This serves a critical US interest: ensuring that America’s policies, culture, and leadership are clearly and accurately communicated to international audiences in their own languages,” they added.
Slashing the length of journalists’ stays risks leaving the world less informed about American news and current affairs, the news organisations said on Thursday.
Rival nations and powerful adversaries will waste no time in filling the resulting vacuum with narratives about the US that serve their own interests before the truth, they added.
Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2025